Ceramic daffodils at Lowther Castle raise over £300,000 for charity

  • Watch as the ceramic daffodils raise more than £300,000 for charity.

The thousands of ceramic daffodils that have been on display at Lowther Castle, near Penrith, have raised more than £300,000 for charity.

15,000 ceramic daffodils went on display, inspired by William Wordsworth's world famous poem.

The curtain has finally fallen on the installation, but it's raised hundreds of thousands of pounds for local charities.

Creator Helen Ratcliffe spoke about the idea behind the ceramic flowers.

She said: "The idea originally came from, yes, the Wordsworth poem and being asked to actually come up with an idea for the Year of Ullswater Arts. And so I immediately thought of daffodils. It's still quite unbelievable, actually.

"The project has happened. I guess we're about 12 months now, and yeah, it's pretty much 12 months since we started planning for the project. And so it's been a lot of hard work, but so much fun."

Hundreds of thousands of pounds has been raised for charity. Credit: ITV

500 volunteers worked for thousands of hours to make it all a reality.

Bryan Gray, Lowther Castle and Gardens Trust: “It's wonderful to allow this to open its doors to a number of local charities and support them because we are a charity ourselves and one that's been very successful for very keen to enable others to to do good things for the area as well."

The Installation at Lowther Castle has now finished. 13,000 clay flowers have been sold in local shops as part of a fundraising effort. Six charities involved in the project will benefit from a share of more than £310,000, with four of those based in Cumbria.

Amy Bray, CEO Another Way: “I think the best thing about this project has been seeing such a strong community of Cumbria and people get together to create something so kind and generous for so many charities.

"And we've had people that have come to us and said it's helped them with issues like loneliness, it's helped them recover from covid or to support their wellbeing, and it's just engendered this community spirit, people just doing something for a common cause."

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